Today neither of us really had a list in mind, so we decided to have some fun. Church took the core concept of @swarmer s list and made some church-style adjustments. I grabbed a list by @sarumanthewhite that I liked and made a minor change. Hope you guys don't mind us using them.

My list:

199/200
Prince Faolan [36] 1x1
Malcornes Bequest [6]
Legendary Prowess [5]
Total Unit Cost: 47

Aliana of Summersong [33] 1x1
Packleaders Spear [8]
Ambush Predator [3]
Total Unit Cost: 44

Deepwood Archers [42] 3x2
Maegan Cyndewin [10]
Fire Rune [7]
Frontline Aymhelin Scion [6]
Hunters Guile [4] switched to close quarters targeting
Total Unit Cost: 69

Leonx Riders [30] 2x2
Raven Tabards [2]
Metered March [2]
Moment of Inspiration [5]
Total Unit Cost: 39

I switched Hunters Guile to CQT, because I felt more comfortable running a melee archer block. I haven't run Faolan much with legendary prowess, but I need to break away from Etharyon builds.

Church's List:

199/200
Ardus IxErebus [37] 1x1
Dimodian Blades [5]
Ardus Fury [1]
Total Unit Cost: 43

Reanimate Archers [18] 2x1
Rank Discipline [4]
Tempered Steel [3]
Total Unit Cost: 25

Reanimate Archers [18] 2x1
Rank Discipline [4]
Tempered Steel [3]
Total Unit Cost: 25

Carrion Lancers [15] 1x1
Total Unit Cost: 15

Carrion Lancers [15] 1x1
Rank Discipline [4]
Total Unit Cost: 19

Carrion Lancers [15] 1x1
Rank Discipline [4]
Total Unit Cost: 19

Reanimates [35] 3x2
Deathcaller [5]
Raven-Standard Bearer [3]
Tactical Drummer [2]
Support Carrion Lancer [6]
Simultaneous Orders [2]
Total Unit Cost: 53

Deathcaller is something you don't see Church run every day (reanimated are rare enough). This will be interesting.

Objective and Deployment:

We are currently running a set of 3 objectives and deployments, so Encircling maneuvers comes up often. Oblique formation made for a weird setup.

Terrain is the Estate courtyard, the Thornchoked Circle, and the Bone Totem.

Setup:

I placed Faolan first, then Church put most of his army down. I vectored Alliana off to the side, while using the Leonx redeploy to take them from a front on fight to a wide flank.

Church piled in to go straight for my deployment area.

The deepwoods and one lancer are held back by the objective.

Round 1:

Church pushes forward aggressively, and catches Faolan with a deathcaller, inflicting 2 wounds. Knowing his time is limited, Faolan pushes forward to meet the reanimates and exact revenge.

Alliana takes off and sprints into the thorn-choked circle. The Leonx make a wide sweep of the terrain.

My deepwoods best deployment option is in my own deployment zone. It gives them plenty of targets, and keeps the lancer from deploying behind me.

Church adds his lancer behind his forces.

Round 2:

Faolan holds his charge to i4 to avoid the Reanimates counterattack, but Church is devious, and uses his skill to blight my deepwoods. Bye bye fire rune. Faolan does an underwhelming attack, taking a tray.

Ardus and two Lancers press in towards the deepwoods. The deepwoods fire at the reanimates, taking another tray and spiking 1 damage to each undead archer unit via Meagan.

Alliana pops out of the terrain and shifts into easy charge range of Ardus.

The leonx turn to run between the obstacles.

Round 3:

4 red runes get cast this turn, which makes Alliana get a near auto kill on Ardus even with Church using his i2 armor up (built in mortal strike, ambush predator charged at 3 lethal, packleaders spear gives lethal 3, the bone totem gives lethal 4 due to runes, totalling a wound plus 10 lethal). She rolls the 2 damage necessary.

Faolan gets the reanimates down to one rank, when the reanimates swing back, they get a total blank on their roll, leaving Faolan to fight another day.

The reanimate Archers take a shot at Alliana, who falls victim to the bone totem as well, as the archers put 10 damage on her.

The deepwoods get flanked by a Lancer, who rolls 4 surges and 1 damage, plus 2 lethal off bone totem. 7 archers fall.

Thanks to CQT the Deepwoods continue cutting the reanimates down. However the blight prevents the fire rune again.

The other free lancer gets a blight onto the deepwoods to prevent the next fire rune.

The Leonx close in on a target.

Round 4:

The Reanimates score a wound Faolan, but are losing power fast. Faolan cuts a few more figure out (namely, the deathcaller).

The Lancer flanking the Deepwoods gets the back rank off. The deepwoods fire into the reanimates and disengage Faolan by cutting a tray out, leaving only the lancer.

The Leonx slaughter a Lancer in one shot, but take 2 wounds and a blight from archers.

The last Lancer lands a long charge on the Leonx and gets a surge-heavy roll, cutting the cats to one tray.

Round 5:

Faolan flanks the reanimate lancer and kills it.

The Leonx roll a weak attack (had 2 blight) but score a wound on the Lancer. It finishes them off.

The deepwoods get a surge-spike attack on the Lancer, killing it and 2 archers out of each unit.

The flanking Lancer cuts the deepwoods to 2 trays.

Round 6:

Faolan is trapped, he can't shift out of range of the archers before they shoot. They drop him in a hail of arrows.

The Lancer chews up Meagan and the last archers, just the scion now.

The Deepwood scion double shifts and scoots away.

Round 7:

There is no escape, the lancer corners the scion. However, the scion stuns the lancer with frontline scions ability.

Round 8:

The Archers pop the scion by revealing their dial. The surge with tempered steel is enough.

Waiqar wins!

Afterthoughts:

That was a fun match. Both lists were a bit different from what we normally do.

The blight synergized Lancers were really good. Several times they got multiple mortal strikes. Plus the blight skill kept the fire rune out of commission for most of the game.

The deathcaller got a critical strike on Faolan on turn 1, which really made me have to close the range with it, or lose faolan before he delivers any damage. The original plan had been to flank right with everything, so charging Faolan headlong into the battle was a bad, but necessary choice.

The 2x2 Leonx did well until it got slaughtered by a blight drooling lancer. I generally do not like this unit, but it has its perks. It has more offensive capability than the 2x1 rank cat, but is a bit clumsier in tight spaces, and is a higher point sink. If I had been able to bring it in on the archers, it would have fared better.

The Bone totem did a lot of damage. This is why terrain can be the most influential part of a battle, and is sometimes best to put off to the side of a battle and ignore it. The totem was influential in killing Ardus, Alliana, and the Deepwoods.

The place Church hurt my army the most was by blighting the fire rune out. The 3x2 deepwoods with meagan is a heavy damage-slinger. When it launches 2 attacks per turn it can bring an army down in a few short rounds. Most of the early and mid turns had 4 red runes up. A rally battery could have solved this, but then half the army is deepwoods. Plus, more attacks could have provided more surge spike opportunities, I was 1 surge away from cutting Church's archers down to 1 threat.

In summary, great battle, with interesting moments on either side. Waiqars Archers really swayed the late game, but the Bone totem was the mvp this game.

Thanks for reading!

2 hours ago, Jukey said:

Today neither of us really had a list in mind, so we decided to have some fun. Church took the core concept of @swarmer s list and made some church-style adjustments. I grabbed a list by @sarumanthewhite that I liked and made a minor change. Hope you guys don't mind us using them.

You joking? I'm honored XD

Feels nice to see that my list won, even if i'm sure Church's touch greatly improved it.

A little sad to see that poor Ardus died really quick

By the way, Church's undead looks so exotic, there is a topic for them in the painting section?

Great to see one of my lists in action. Tabletop Admiral is a great resource for sharing lists. I know I’ve co-opted a few from other folks as well. I like the CQT swap out. I was trying to find a way to pump up the Archers since two blue dice seems a bit weak. When I built the list, I thought Faolan would sit back a bit, hold their flank and then charge whoever came running across the map. It looks like the early wounds from the Deathcaller made that a bit perilous.

When putting together the list, I was trying to max out the Archer unit so I added the Frontline Scion. If the attacker doesn’t have Agressive Cornicen (or equivalent), it prevents a charge or skill action with the Stun (at least that was the theory). Did you find it useful? I was struggling with it’s inclusion and was thinking of maybe using the Support Scion to shift out of people’s way. Also, I struggle with Malcorne’s vs. Spirit Sword on Faolan. The Sword makes him a real beast in combat, but you’re at the mercy of the flips when it comes to the runes, I guess.

One question I had was the deployment. My understanding of the setup rules from the Tournament FAQ is that the person with the most units has to deploy the difference before anyone places a unit. That would imply that @Church14 would have had to deploy 3 units before you would have placed any (even if you were first player). Am I reading that correctly?

Great report, thanks for sharing...

My personal take on Faolan is he has 2 builds, aggressive, and supportive. If building for aggressive, use spirit sword and legendary prowess, if going for support, run malcorne and Etharyon. Also, only bring malcorne if you have 2 or more fire runes, or are running a hedge build.

The frontline scion is fun, I actually got him to proc twice in the game, which helped my deepwoods and Faolan last longer. It's not a great choice if running meagan in the same unit because you want the surges for her half the time.

My preferred meagan deepwood build is on the 2x2, since you can still pack fire rune, but are more inclined to roll for surges to do spike damage rather than just direct damage.

Deployment I've always been fuzzy on. I thought first player had to put their first unit down, then player 2 balances unit numbers. If I'm wrong please let us know.

Checkout Section 6 of the Tournament FAQ on pg. 8

“If one player has more units in his or her army, that player deploys units until both players have the same number of units not yet deployed.” (Scouts don’t count against this limit). It seems like most lists are around 5 units, so it may not matter, but in this case, with an MSU on one side, it gets a bit more complicated.

How useful did you find Maegan in the Archer unit? Maybe my view is biased by what I can achieve with the Daqan Crossbowmen, but I find myself doing everything to get the Deepwoods damage up. Against defense 1 units, this list seems to have a chance, but Protected really puts a dent in it.

Thanks, I missed that update on deployment.

As for meagan in the deepwoods, she did her fair share of work. I got 2 surge spikes totaling 3 damage to the reanimate archers, the Lancers shrugged it off due to armor. Her lethal is always nice, but only had one green most turns, even with malcorne. Funny thing when fighting reanimates with meagan, her lethal damage always is nullified by regen.

Really, if you ever have 10 free points and a champion slot open on any unit, meagan is an auto include. She is probably the best figure upgrade in the game for her cost. My preferred units for her in order though are: 2x2 ventala, 2x2 deepwoods, 2x3 ventala, 2x2 darnati, 3x2 deepwoods. For a good time, try 2x2 darnati with meagan, pathwalkers, and hedge, get ready for tilting!

If you want a damage bump from deepwoods, tempered steel on the 3x2 is the way to go, gets them up to 9, with potential of 12-15 if you use Meagan and hunters guile (never tried it mind you). The best points to damage build is the 2x1 with fire rune and hedge. They become deadly late round shift/skill fire attackers, or nasty double tapping units. The hedge can make them last longer than a 3x2 in the right circumstances.

On 3/23/2019 at 3:03 AM, swarmer said:

By the way, Church's undead looks so exotic, there is a topic for them in the painting section?

Not really. I can go grab the list of colors used.

Rucksack tan (cloaks and fabric)

Bootstrap leather (belts and wood)

Pig iron

white (usually just white primer)

Sepia tone wash. I left the wash on far longer than I normally would and it made them look muddy.

Some sort of sand-meets-paint texture for the bases. I can check tonight and see what the brand/name was.

Theu were the the first thing I ever painted. So they look great on table but don’t look so great up close.

On 3/23/2019 at 3:03 AM, swarmer said:

A little sad to see that poor Ardus died really quick

I’m normally an Uthuk player. So my Runewars instincts wax aggresive. Even with lists that have heavy archer presence.

When I’m actually patient with Ardus, he tends to deliver. A particularly effective deployment I try to use and usually lack the discipline to maintain is to have the front line be Lancer-Ardus-Lancer and have two 2x1 archers just behind. Keep the lancers ever so slightly ahead of Ardus. Let them take the charge and have Ardus ready to respond.

If Ardus is blocking for combat ingenuity archers, try Master Crafted Weapons on one of them. It gives Ardus surge to hit, which is really potent.

I try to play Ardus in this way as well, keeping him back to counter-attack people who rush my ranged attackers. Since I play him with Dimodian Blades, I’m also cognizant of the runes as this can also make a big difference. As I mentioned above, I one shot splatted Hawthorne preventing his Margath’s Shield from triggering. The first time I put MCW on an Archer block, I felt like I was wasting the slot, but I look at it as adding another slot to Ardus...

38 minutes ago, sarumanthewhite said:

I try to play Ardus in this way as well, keeping him back to counter-attack people who rush my ranged attackers. Since I play him with Dimodian Blades, I’m also cognizant of the runes as this can also make a big difference. As I mentioned above, I one shot splatted Hawthorne preventing his Margath’s Shield from triggering. The first time I put MCW on an Archer block, I felt like I was wasting the slot, but I look at it as adding another slot to Ardus...

You have to look at it not as:

I added CI and MCW for 10 points on an archer block for Ardus.

But as:

I already have CI archers, for 4 points, I potentially make Ardus do a LOT of damage.

EDIT: back of envelope math puts Ardus dialing in a hit mod with Dimodian Blades and near MCW/CI archers at average 10.7 damage. Without MCW, he’s at 9. He does a serious amount of damage if he goes off.

Totally. Plus if you have Duskblade on some nearby Death Knights, you can spend one or two of those surges to take their defense down a point or two and make a hero or Spined Threshers go splat. Heck, I maxed out with the Runes and did 10 damage at defense 1. That would have taken down Ravos...

This topic is really helping and interesting, thank you guys!